Old Habits Die Hard
by halfabagoffritos
Summary: Quinn doesn't meet her roommate face-to-face until the Sunday before their second week of classes, when the girl stomps into their dorm room and accuses her of stealing a flash drive.


**One.**

Quinn doesn't meet her roommate face-to-face until the Sunday before their second week of classes, when the girl stomps into their dorm room and accuses her of stealing a flash drive.

She was given a picture when she moved in and, from it, recognized her around the campus, usually from a distance and only for a split second before the girl's disappeared seemingly into thin air. Quinn's at least sixty percent certain she doesn't actually sleep in their shared room. There's stuff neatly packed away on her half of it - books, clothing, a picture of her and three other girls - but she's pretty sure Spencer Hastings hasn't spent a night in that bed since school began.

Spencer Hastings. Almost as snooty a name as Quinn Fabray. Their parents would probably get along fabulously.

Homework had already piled up on her from that first week, and Quinn is nothing if not a stellar student, so she's sitting at her pressed wood desk tapping away at the laptop her mom had thrust into her already overfull arms as she boarded the train - taken at Rachel's insistence, instead of a more practical plane ride, following her own excursion earlier that summer - when all five-foot-something of intense brunette storms into her face and practically seethes, "_Where is it?_"

Quinn, to her credit, doesn't immediately brandish her freshly sharpened pencil in defense but instead summons every ounce of hardened patience - built up from befriending Rachel, naturally - and turns casually in her chair to confront the very livid Spencer Hastings. "Where is _what_?"

So she can't help a little edge to her voice.

"You _know_ what!" is the retort, accompanied by the folding of arms across her chest, which really only serves to draw Quinn's attention to said area.

_Snap out of it, Fabray,_ she thinks. _This girl looks about five seconds from flaying you alive with her eyes alone._

"I believe," she says mildly, after blinking once to regroup focus, "I don't, in fact, know to what you are referring."

Spencer huffs loudly - more of a disgusted groan, by Quinn's estimation - and slaps the wall with her hand. "My _flash drive_!" she hisses. "I know you took it! I left it in here and you're the only other one with a key!"

Quinn swallows slowly, more than a little startled by the attack on the wall next to her desk. Perhaps this girl is a little _too_ intense. Time for a different tactic, lest she actually have to defend herself with that walking cane leaning against her bed. "I'm sorry, I don't have your…flash drive," she says, forcing what she hopes is an innocent smile. "But if I see it, I'll definitely let you know."

Spencer's eyes narrow. "Oh, I see. You're good." She turns to stalk back through the door. "You'll slip up. They always do."

Quinn stares at the closed - slammed, really - door for a long while after. "I'm actually living with a crazy person," she mutters to the empty room.

**Two.**

Not that she has any particular insight into how a 'crazy person' operates, but Quinn can't honestly say she expected to find the girl burgling her backpack when she hobbled in from lunch the next day, mid-text message to Rachel. "What the _hell_?" she shrieks and drops her cell, fairly certain she just alerted the entire building to this mess.

Spencer just looks up at her with narrowed eyes, not in the least visibly ashamed. "You hide things well, I see," she says.

Quinn's eyes bug out a little. "Are you _insane_? This is… This is not how normal people behave!" Her arms flail to emphasize her point at just how absurd this all is, and she nearly takes out Spencer's eye with her cane.

Spencer ducks to avoid, just barely. "Ah ha, now you're stooping to weapons!" she says with a point of her finger. "I'm _well_-versed in makeshift weaponry! You won't get away with this!"

"Get away with _what_?" This is entirely too much for her, and she's well-versed on crazy after four years at McKinley. Rachel or Santana would have a field day against this girl. "I already told you I didn't take your stupid flash drive!"

Spencer smirks as she pushes to a stand. "Still with that story, eh?" she asks. "You should know, Fabray, that I never give up. Ever."

Their arms brush as Spencer walks past to the door, and Quinn knows she's supposed to feel threatened and kind of afraid for her safety - and really, she _does_ on some level - but the smirking and weird brand of confidence and brunette-ness of it all is oddly thrilling. Still, though, rummaging through her own personal things is a definite mark in the Unattractive column.

She snatches her phone off the ground and clears out the message she'd been working on, replacing it with, _I'm pretty sure my roommate is going to literally kill me._ She also forwards the same text to Santana and Brittany. Best to make sure several people know in case she goes missing suddenly.

The responses from all three filter in a few minutes after. Rachel's reads, **Don't be silly, Quinn. I'm sure she's actually quite lovely and you can be kind of intimidating when someone first meets you.**

Santana's is, of course, **Whatever, Fabray. Just fingerbang her already.** Quinn doesn't even try to stop the ensuing eyeroll.

Brittany, ever the gentle soul, says, **You should give her a stuffed animal! A lion. It'll remind her of you every time she sees it!**

Quinn sighs and throws her phone on the bed, along with the rest of her. Her head aches nearly as much as her legs usually do. She doesn't have classes for a couple hours. _Maybe a nap will help_, she thinks while rubbing her temples, until her eyes close of their own volition and she's beset by dreams of a crazy-eyed brunette stalker.

Even with this vague attraction to Spencer, Quinn still marches - as best she can - to her RA's room that evening and demands a change in…anything at all. Roommate, room…at this point, she'll stoop to living in the gym on a cot to get away from this lunacy. She's denied, though, with a very empathetic shake of the head. And a smirk. She swears she saw a smirk in there somewhere. She's also reminded that she specifically wrote, "Aggressively hyperactive brunettes," under the Likes column of her 'About Me' sheet, and damned if Spencer doesn't fit that to a tee.

She spends the rest of the night pricing impenetrable safes on Amazon, just in case.

**Three.**

Tuesday morning is quiet, at least relative to the past couple days. No maniacs disguised as Yale students have practically threatened her life, or pillaged any personal property. And it's a sunny day, to boot. A smile touches her lips as she sips a chai latte out on the commons. Perhaps a sign of things returning to normal.

Except for that head of brown hair poking out from behind a tree across the way, accompanied by sunglasses and…a voice recorder?

Quinn sighs and finishes her coffee. So much for a reprieve. Better to be stalked than attacked outright by a shrieking harpy, she supposes, but figures it best to remain on guard in case of an ambush.

She forces down Spencer-related thoughts in favor of classical literature as she gathers her things to head to her next class, though she does pause to make a note of calling Santana later. Surely the girl might have at least _some_ useful advice unrelated to sex.

Probably not. Be good to talk to someone vaguely sane, though.

She catches swift, jerky movements out of the corner of her eye as she walks. Normally, she'd chalk it up to other students milling about but she's working on three days now of bizarre behavior from her roommate so she stops abruptly to glance behind her.

Of course Spencer's following her, still jabbering into that recorder. _Of fucking course._

Quinn's eyes roll mightily as she turns to continue on her way. Puck would probably find this a turn-on. Rachel would storm over and lecture the shit out of the girl. Santana would start roaring vaguely Spanish expletives and threats. Brittany would just try to hug her. None of the above could possibly have any effect on Spencer Hastings.

Her friends are so useless sometimes.

A couple hours later, class finished and her mind humming with possible ideas for her next paper, Quinn hobbles back down the path to the dorms. She absently listens to the jabbering from one of her classmates - a pretty redhead whose name she can't possibly remember in that moment because _Spencer fucking Hastings is still ducked behind that goddamn tree._

"Excuse me a minute," she grits out as she hitches her backpack and stomps across the grass.

The girl - _Ashley? Amy? Amanda? Whatever._ - calls after her something or other about meeting later at the library for a study session, but she's got far, far bigger fish to fry right now.

"Hey!" she yells at the tree hiding Spencer. "Hastings, what the _hell_?"

She's pretty sure half the university now thinks they're both insane.

Spencer's dulcet tones, in a hushed murmur, fade in the closer she gets. "Target is approaching. Aborting mission."

"I can _hear you_!" Quinn says as she rounds the tree and comes face to face with her obnoxiously attractive nemesis. Sunglasses and a trench coat really do suit the girl. Though, she has to be burning up considering it's still late summer.

_Do not **even** think about a sweaty Spencer Hastings right now, Fabray,_ she growls to herself.

"Why, good afternoon, Fabray," Spencer says with the phoniest of phony smiles. Quinn should know; she's a goddamn expert on those. "How's my flash drive treating you?"

"Oh, for the love of…" Quinn huffs, throwing her hands in the air - and momentarily forgetting about that damn cane in the process. "For the last damn time, I didn't-"

"-take my flash drive, I know," Spencer smirks and lowers her sunglasses to stare at her over the rims. "You're gonna have to find a new story to sell there, sweetheart, cause no one's buying." She snaps her glasses back in place and brushes past, practically _sauntering_.

"Oh that's _it_!" Quinn snatches Spencer by the arm to slam her up against the tree. All that upper body work from the time spent wheelchairing it is finally paying off. "You need to stop. This_. Now_," she growls, giving her most aggressive patented Fabray glare. No one resists the Fabray glare.

Except _Spencer fucking Hastings_.

Spencer smirks again and tilts her head ever so slightly to where she's but an inch or few from Quinn's own. "I've taken down girls living in a perpetual state of hyperreality," she murmurs. "I'm not scared of you, and I always get what I want." She slides her arm free of Quinn's rapidly slackening grip and brushes on past.

Okay, so she's just a little paralyzed by that. _That girl's going to be just the **death** of me_. A tiny part of her whispers an addition - _In the best way possible, too._

She makes good on her plan to call Santana later that evening, even if it just ends with her laughing at Quinn's mess of a personal life.

"I thought I told you to _get down on it_!" Santana crows over the phone, nearly every word choked in continued snickers. "Obviously she's willing and ready to go!"

"Oh_ fuck off_," Quinn grumbles and hangs up, flinging her phone onto her bed before joining it.

She doesn't even remember that planned study date with what's-her-name until just before drifting off into sleep.

**Four.**

Her day so far is blissfully quiet - aside from a series of very passive-aggressive text messages from That One Girl about missing their study 'date' the previous night but she hasn't got time to deal with that when she's constantly pitted against an _actually_ aggressive girl - and Spencer-free for a change until a light rapping at the dorm room door interrupts her planned homework session.

Quinn flings down her pencil and limps over to answer, figuring at least it can't be Spencer come to torment her again since the girl's got a key and besides, like she'd ever politely _knock_ to request entry to anything. The girl probably has all manner of lockpicking devices to put even herself to shame.

Surely enough, some brunette she's never before met stands on the other side, brandishing a wide smile, _enormous_ eyes, and an unusually be-feathered necklace. "Hi!" she says immediately. "Quinn, right?"

Quinn arches an eyebrow and narrows her eyes as she gives the girl a look-over. "Er, yes…" she replies while wracking her brain. A classmate? Another 'date' she's completely forgotten in the face of her ongoing Spencer-related struggles? Lord, what if she's a spy _for_ Spencer and this is some heinous surprise attack hidden beneath the doe-est of eyes she's ever seen? "Can I…help you?"

The girl shifts her gargantuan purse and juts a hand out to shake Quinn's own with an enthusiasm Quinn likens to Rachel. "I'm Aria! So great to have more than a picture to put to the stories, you know?"

_Stories?_ No other word in the English language could possibly sound more suspicious to her in that moment, and she repeats that same thought aloud.

"Yeah, you know - the pretty blonde with a limp," Aria says, though her eyes crinkle at the corners and hedge a quick glance to the side before returning their gaze to Quinn.

This does nothing to alleviate the wary butterflies storming around her head but she shakes it off for the moment. The girl hasn't come at her with anything more than a smile, anyway, and her legs ache for her to sit down on something soon. "Right, well, Spencer's not here right now, so…"

"Oh!" Aria says as she starts rummaging through her purse. "I just wanted to return this flash drive to her-"

"Wait, _you_ had it?"

That little_ wretch!_

Quinn's grip on the doorjamb tightens as she glares at the drive resting in Aria's outstretched palm. Black, slender, roach-like. Naturally something so innocuously heinous would belong to Spencer Hastings herself. Quinn half-expects it to leap from Aria's hand and unleash a laser frenzy on the world. Like that movie Sam was fond of. Transmorphers or something.

"Y-Yeah…" Aria stutters, glancing around with suddenly uneasy eyes. "She loaned it to me last week so I could shuffle some papers around between home and the lab and all…"

Quinn has no time for explanations, only revenge, and considers a call to Santana - who better to plot retribution than she? - but that girl's been a pain in her ass all week with her _insinuations_. She snatches the drive from Aria with a snarled, "I'll make sure she _gets it_."

Oh, will she _ever_.

Aria, for her part, backs slowly away with hands raised in defense. "Right, okay, thanks…" She's halfway down the hall before she calls out, "I'll see you later, Quinn. Nice to meet you!" and turns fully to leave.

Quinn figures she must look like Beelzebub himself for how quickly Aria bolts from the dorms. No matter, she has the nefarious flash drive in hand. Vengeance will be hers!

A tiny, Rachel-voiced part of her mind chitters over the roar. _Now, Quinn, you could just take the high road and leave it on Spencer's desk…_

The rest of her demands revenge! Smash the drive! Scatter the shattered remains across Spencer's bed! Gloat when she returns to their room to see it!

She sets the drive down with a growl next to a few books Spencer has stacked on one corner of her desk.

Damnable Rachel.

**Five.**

She doesn't see the star-shaped yellow post-it stuck to her backpack until she's hefting it over her shoulder. Just a simple 'Sorry.' is scrawled on it in blocky handwriting but her fingers tremble as they pluck it free, slightly crinkling the edges. It's not _her_ handwriting but the post-it shape still kicks her square in the heart and she all but flops back onto her bed as she stares herself into a complete haze.

_"You have no idea how much you mean to me…"_

_"I'm sorry, Quinn… I just can't…"_

_"You'll still come visit, won't you? I don't think I could stand you not being there…"_

She blinks, and hours have seemingly passed and she's now curled into fetal position under three of her blankets and _that damn post-it_ is a crumpled mess clutched in her hand. She hasn't thought about that night in months. She hasn't let herself. It hurts too damn much, hearing those words and seeing _that damn post-it_ stuck to her mirror the next morning.

She can't even acknowledge that Spencer _actually apologized_ for accusing her of flash drive theft. Not today.

Maybe tomorrow.

**Six.**

She is indeed better tomorrow, or at least is cognizant of the world around her. She's even already conjured an 'illness' story for her professors when she goes to gather any work she missed. And she's actually making progress on this classic lit paper before morning classes when a grande cup slams into her immediate field of vision, attached to a distinctly feminine hand. A hand she knows quite well by now.

"Good morning, Spencer," she manages to say evenly and without rolling her eyes.

"Sorry," she grunts back. "Old habits die hard."

Quinn nearly asks what sort of nonsense happened to her previously to where her _habits_ dictated she flail accusations at otherwise innocent people but restrains herself because she's certain the answer to that would take far more time than she actually has available. "Apology accepted," she murmurs instead and sips at the drink. Chai latte. Impressive, stalking aside.

Spencer just nods in response and spins on her heel to storm off to…wherever it is she goes all the time. Class perhaps, considering it's morning on a Friday.

She swigs the chai latte and pulls a slip of parchment paper from between the sheets of her notebook, revealing the basics of a sketched portrait she'd started yesterday. Eyes she imagines brown and deep and soulful gaze back at her. She sighs and shakes her head, reaching for a pencil.

Later in the day she happens upon Spencer - happens to walk by Spencer, that is - and catches her grousing over her cell to some mystery person that she "did what you told me". And she wonders just what she did in a previous life to grant her such a strange and attractive roommate.

**Seven.**

She _knows_ she left it on her desk. Definitely didn't take it with her to class or anywhere else where it could have just fallen out of her notebook. So where could it have possibly gone…?

A knock at the door interrupts her frenzied search - mid-scattering the entirety of her backpack contents across the floor. Behind it stands another girl she hasn't met, but she's glanced enough at that picture on Spencer's desk to know it's one of _those_ girls, like that Aria. Black hair, this time, and tan like Santana. Pretty as well. "If you're looking for Spencer, she's not here," she says, knowing she sounds entirely too gruff to politely greet a stranger.

"N-No," the girl replies, shuffling her feet a bit. "Actually, I was looking for you?"

Quinn just blinks and peers at her.

The girl clears her throat. "I'm Emily. And I think this is yours…" She lifts her hand and in it is clutched…_that damn sketch_.

Quinn snatches it from the Emily girl and scans it over to make sure nothing untoward had happened to it - besides it finding its way into _some stranger's hands_! "Where the- How did you-?!" She can't even form the right words. Well, she can form _one_ word. "_Spencer_," she hisses.

Emily at least looks completely embarrassed, and she nods. "She…doesn't really get normal people interaction. She… I don't know…" She points at the sketch Quinn is taking extra care to not just crumple to bits with how irritated she is. "I think she was jealous, maybe? It's hard to tell sometimes."

"Jealous?" she blurts before giving herself a chance to think, then looks down at the sketch. "Of this?"

"You see, I…" Emily sucks in a breath before continuing, somehow not wilting under Quinn's glare. "She talks about you, like, all the time and I guess she saw that sitting on your desk and thought it was your girlfriend, so if you could-"

"My _girlfriend_?" She nearly chokes on the word.

Emily raises her hands in defense and shakes her head. "I-If it's not, that's totally fine. Just a friend is cool. Maybe good? I mean, Spencer _really_-"

Quinn looks at her sketch, at _those eyes_ staring back at her. _Those eyes_ she always wished she could just drown in. "No," she whispers. "She said no…"

"Oh… Oh!" She can hear Emily catch on without having to look back up at her. "I'm…sorry?"

The tears are building up again. She can feel the eye-sting precursor, and there's _absolutely no way_ she's crying in front of a relative stranger. "Listen, can you just-"

"Go, yeah, I totally understand," Emily says but still lingers. "If you ever want-"

"No." It's all she can really say. Any other words that aren't _Rachel_ are just clogged in her throat and brain and it'd take a pick-axe to even start breaking through that mess.

"It was still nice to meet you, Quinn."

She closes the door in a daze and ambles over to her bed. Thank god there's no class today. She's pretty sure she's due another cry-fest in bed.

Maybe this time, it'll be the last.

**Eight.**

She doesn't usually think anything of walking back from her late classes by herself. Sure, the start-of-term meet-and-greet had been filled to brimming of warnings to always travel with a buddy and carry whistle or mace or _something_ and she at least did the latter if not the former. That Amelia girl had offered to walk back with her but really after the endless supply of passive-aggression about just forgetting a study date, and the emotional havoc she'd wreaked upon herself the past couple days, she couldn't possibly tolerate another person's presence for longer than absolutely necessary.

Madness, honestly, to still think about it. She thought she was over it, she really did. A pretty clear and definite 'no', with no room for argument. And they were still friends, still texted everyday, still laughed about Santana's antics or how dumb they both were to continually fall for Finn's bullshit, or-

Maybe she should have heeded those dire warnings to always walk with a buddy after all, as a something snatched her by the arm and pulled her off the sidewalk.

Or maybe not…as the lips that crashed against her own were soft and sweet like strawberries and it took all her willpower to not just _melt_ right on the spot. Not exactly a good reaction to being _attacked at night_ but when she managed to pull away and catch sight of a piercing set of brown eyes before they skittered away into the night, all she could possibly know was _Oh, **fuck**._

Her legs, especially the bad one, just barely managed to carry her the rest of the way to her bed before turning entirely to jelly.

**Nine.**

An early-morning knock rouses her from strawberry-filled dreams and - after grumpily fumbling about for her cane - she slings open the door to reveal some blonde she…again recognizes from that photo with Spencer and Aria and Emily. "Yeah?" she grouses. It's too early to deal with whatever nonsense is about to happen, if her last two meetings with Spencer-friends is any barometer.

The blonde rolls her eyes and mutters in a very forced-at-gunpoint-to-say-this manner, "Spencer's kind of a freak and she's very sorry she kissed you."

It really _is_ too early for this, because she's certain she didn't hear _that_. "Sorry, who the _hell_ are you again?"

She at least looks a little chagrined. "Oh, sorry, I'm Hanna, Spencer's friend."

Quinn rubs at her face. This is_ all_ entirely too much. "And she sent you over here to…what? Apologize for _attacking me_ last night?"

"She didn't _attack_ you," Hanna grumbles, folding her arms. "She just really likes you and she's being kinda _dumb_ about it but she's not some crazy molester or whatever!"

Her eyes bug out and she bites back about a hundred _very_ vicious words that crawl over each other to the tip of her tongue. "Okay, fine, you tell_ her_ that if she likes _me_ then she needs to find some other way to deal with that besides stalking me and stealing my things and now assaulting me at night!"

It takes every ounce of restraint to not just slam _the shit_ out of the door in Hanna's face. Not like the girl did anything specifically wrong - just defended her crazy friend - but this Spencer mess is just _insane_ at this point and she does not have nearly enough energy this early in the morning to deal with it.

**Ten.**

When she said Spencer needed to find some other way to "deal with that", she has to say this wasn't exactly what she had in mind.

Her day had gone fairly well. Quietly, even, aside from that one girl's increasingly overt advances. Alice? She's pretty sure she's never actually going to get that name right in her head. She's getting kind of tired of having to rebuff the incessant requests for a study date ever since she ditched the last one. Her crazy roommate is using up every last ounce of energy she could possibly expend on another person at this point.

So of course said crazy roommate is standing outside the library, staring at her with _those eyes_. How the hell the girl even knew she'd be going to the library… Quinn huffs to herself and hitches her backpack a touch higher. Maybe as well get this over with. "What, Spencer?" she says as she approaches.

She nearly gets a papercut for her troubles as Spencer thrusts a yellowish card at her, and the girl's vanished before she can actually ask what the hell it is. She turns it over in her hand and reads over the printing.

**Jivin' Java presents - Slam-dunk poetry!**

A…poetry reading? At a coffee shop? She glances in the direction of wherever Spencer stalked off to and arches her slender Fabray eyebrow. Is this… Does this mean…

Did she just get asked out on a date?

**Eleven.**

A date. The date. _The_ date. Maybe? She rolls the words around her head as she touches up her mascara in the bathroom mirror. From accusations of theft to _actual_ theft to…a date. Sort of. She's assuming Spencer didn't just give her the flyer because she thinks Quinn likes poetry and that she will actually _be there_ as well. Probably a big assumption.

She shrugs with one last glance in the mirror and figures worst case scenario she can just text that one girl to meet her there. And maybe actually learn her name this time. And tell her she's not being as sly as she thinks she is, making googly-eyes at Quinn from across the room. But the girl hasn't actually _stalked_ her - in a trenchcoat like something out of film noir, no less! - so she's already got several steps on Spencer, even if the attraction isn't really there.

The nighttime chill gnaws at her leg as she walks the few blocks over to that coffee place. _Jivin' Java_ is the name and she groans a little every time she thinks of it, or sees it in red neon over the door just before she steps inside and scans the gathered crowd. Plenty of brunettes in attendance. None of them are _her_ brunette. Not that Spencer actually belongs to her in any capacity save roommate. Not that she even _wants_-

She can't even bring herself to finish that thought. It's obviously not true at this point.

Quinn sighs and plops into the only free booth left, tucked back into a corner, and pulls out her cell. She figures she may as well at least try to salvage the night as she scrolls through her contact list and finds that girl. Andrea. That was her name. Her thumb pauses over the 'Send Message' button as she worries at her bottom lip, and a flash of _something_ catches her eye.

Her head whips up and to and fro and she's certain she looks positively _mad_ but…_there_. Behind the ficus plant just a few feet away. She's _certain_ she knows that head of gently wavy brown hair anywhere. And those intense eyes. And that damnable trench coat.

"Spencer!" she calls out over the din and waves at the girl. Maybe this can be The Date after all. Night salvaged! Quinn can feel the smile curling her lips and her mind already conjuring images of the walk back to the dorm, when they say goodnight to each other and…

…then Spencer ducks her head behind the tree and pretends to not see her. _Of course she fucking did!_

Quinn rolls her eyes and huffs in disgust. She can't even bring herself to text that Adrienne girl or pay a lick of attention to the very beatnik-y poetry selections of the night as she buries her face in her hands and wills her head and heart to not be _so damn disappointed_.

The walk back to her dorm later feels like she's struggling through temperatures below zero for all her everything aches. It's been a few months since she's reached for them but she knows she'll really need those pain pills tonight.

**Twelve.**

She's glad her lay-in-bed-and-listen-to-sappy-songs-on-her-iPod day is Spencer-free because she's pretty sure she's teetering on the brink and even so much as a glimpse at the girl's face would send her spiraling over the edge. Her choice in music for the day isn't really helping.

No one's broken through like this since Rachel.

**Thirteen.**

She's gathering her books for morning classes when someone knocks at the door. She sighs and throws it open, not in the mood to deal right now as she hasn't steeled herself yet for interaction with other people since that _Jivin' Java_ mess.

She's _really_ not in the mood to deal with this foursome, especially, but she pats herself on the back for not immediately slamming the door in their faces.

Emily, Hanna, and Aria form a wall between Quinn and Spencer, though they don't really appear defensive or protective of their friend from the wrath of a woman scorned. Hanna's rolling her eyes before any of them even speak. Maybe they're as tired of this mess as she herself is.

It's Hanna who starts. "Okay, so we're probably as done with this as you are right now…"

_Ding_ goes Quinn's mind.

Emily joins in, much less visibly annoyed than Hanna. "Spencer _really_ does like you, in her own way."

_Funny way of showing it!_ are the internal shouts.

Aria completes the trifecta. "And she wants to take you on a date. A real date, by the way. Not like that stunt she pulled the other night."

Well at least Spencer didn't try to pretend she was anything other than _absurd_, but she's certainly not going to give in _that_ easily. She folds her arms under her chest and gives her best Fabray glare and pursed lips combo. "This is…insane. You all know that, right?"

They all look sheepish and Emily even shrugs a little. "She's… You'd have to know what we've all been through together to understand…" she says and steps to the side to haul Spencer into the middle. "But she wants to be better, with you."

They're all giving Quinn their best doe-eyes - even stupid Spencer fucking Hastings! Well, not Hanna. She's just rolling her eyes, probably at having to beg a date for her friend. "_Fuck_," she mutters under her breath. "Fine, I'll do it. But a real date, and we go together. No meeting her there."

Aria pumps her fist and goes, "Yes!" before shoving Spencer to the side and grabbing Quinn into a stiff, awkward, one-sided hug.

It's all a haze of whooping and dancing - that draws the _thoroughly embarrassing_ attention of everyone else on their floor - and by the time Quinn catches up to what's actually going on around her, three of the four are gone and she's left with Spencer nibbling at her bottom lip and looking anywhere else but at her.

"So…" Quinn says and leans against the doorjamb. Her leg's been acting up more frequently lately. "Did you, er, want to come in? It _is_ your room too, aft-"

"Dinner," Spencer interrupts, suddenly and sharply focused on her.

_Dear **God** those eyes…_ She blinks and shakes her head. "I…huh? Yes?"

"Tomorrow. Five. Haven Grille."

Spencer's halfway down the hall before Quinn realizes she was both asked out and given a time and place. She manages to regain some tiny cognitive ability now that _those eyes_ aren't piercing her. "You come _here_ at five!" she yells down the hall. "We aren't doing this ficus bullshit again!"

She can't care about the murmurs from various other open doors. Not now. Not when she has a date. A real one, where the other person will actually join her rather than stalk from nearby.

**Fourteen.**

_Miracles **do** happen!_ is her first thought when the door to their room opens at precisely five-til to reveal Spencer, garbed in a combination of short pencil skirt and white button down with a baby blue cardigan overlay - of which Quinn secretly approves because cardigans are kind of her thing - and a…distinctly old-lady brooch clasped at her neck. She wonders for a second if Aria had anything to do with that last touch but shakes it off and grabs her cane. "Ready, then?"

Spencer gives a curt nod and is already striding off down the hall before Quinn can take so much as a step in her direction. "Well at least she's _here_," she mutters to herself as she locks the door behind her and hobbles as fast as she can to catch up.

The walk to this Grille place is quiet - a little too quiet, if she's being honest with herself - and Spencer practically buries herself in the menu once they're seated by a too-friendly guy sporting the most flimsy of mustaches.

Quinn sighs. So many signs that this just isn't going to end well. "So, what's good here?" she says, desperate for any kind of conversation. Anything will do. Spencer goes to _Yale_ for crying out loud. The girl's surely better at over-meal communication than, say, Finn.

Spencer just grunts.

"O-kay…" she mutters and takes to looking through her own menu. Maybe just a salad tonight. Nothing too heavy that she'll feel the need to work off later because she's sure she'll be exhausted and ready for bed by the end of this. She'd almost think _nothing that might linger negatively on my breath_ as well but given the way this 'date' has gone thus far, she's almost dead certain there won't be any reason to worry about _that_.

The waiter comes and goes with their orders - hers a garden salad with balsamic on the side, Spencer's a turkey burger with _emphatically_ no tomato, and both request just water with lemon. Quinn finds herself arching an eyebrow at the insistence at no tomato. Almost like one had grown six feet tall and sprouted fangs and attacked her in the middle of the night. Then again, maybe she's allergic. She nods to herself. Must be allergies. Just because she accuses people of weird things and stalks them doesn't mean she's _that_ bizarre.

Silence descends rapidly once the waiter leaves and Quinn finds herself drumming her fingers on the table while Spencer looks just about everywhere except at her. "So… How are your classes?" she says. She's so used to Rachel's extreme verbosity that this much quiet is slowly _killing_ her.

"Good."

She's about five damn seconds from collapsing and wailing and gnashing her teeth at this damn girl to not be so completely absurd because this is _a date_ that _she_ wanted and _she_ asked and how can she just _sit there_ and act like it's completely normal to say nothing at all?! She gives herself another pat on the back for remaining so composed instead. "…Join any clubs or teams?"

"No."

She wants to scream _so badly_. Instead she gulps at her water and plays out several scenarios in her head in which she alternatingly strangles Spencer and throws her down on the table to just _pry_ the words from her own tongue.

She's in fact chin-deep in the latter when their food arrives, and approximately twenty-five seconds later she gets to watch Spencer _lose her fucking mind_.

"Are you _serious_?" she shrieks around a mouthful of burger, flinging the rest back onto the plate. "What did I _say_?"

The waiter looks like he wants to curl up and die. Quinn kind of wants to join him.

"No tomato! None! Are you trying to kill me?!"

"M-Ma'am…" he says, wringing his hands. "T-There _is_ no toma-"

"I can _taste it_!" Spencer shoves her plate at Quinn. "Here, try it. I can _promise_ you'll taste it, too."

"Are you _insane_?" she hisses back, then turns to the poor waiter. "We'll take our check now, please. I'm really sorry about her."

"No! He's not going anywhere until he admits it!"

She _really_ wants to just shrivel up into nothing. Bad enough when it's just the dorm hall staring at them. Now they have an entire restaurant of strangers doing the same. She slams two twenties and a ten on the table - extra for the guy's trouble and also to buy him some new pants because she's pretty sure he's wet himself in terror - and hefts to her feet. "I'm done," she growls, glaring Fabray-daggers down at Spencer. "_We're_ done."

She's out the door before anyone can stop her and the cold nips her leg. The several-block walk back will be painful but she'll manage, even with tears prickling at her eyes. Fuck those butterflies she still gets at the sight of that girl. Fuck that tiny part of her that wants to go back inside and fix whatever the hell is wrong with her.

_Fuck_ Spencer Hastings and her enormous bag of drama.

**Fifteen.**

She doesn't know what she was expecting the next morning - having not heard from Spencer the rest of the night, and instead spending it curled up in a ball with her trusty iPod - but a bundle of gardenias resting on her chest figured to be the last possible thing. Certainly jolted her awake faster, though with a greater burst of the jitters, than a cup of her favorite coffee. She's thankful that the sight of gardenias isn't the trigger it used to be and her eyes keen in on a card nestled in the bouquet. She plucks it out and reads out loud, "I'm kind of a mess. If I promise to not go all stupid-psychotic next time, will you give me one more shot?"

Oddly enough, it's not the blocky handwriting with which she's by now intimately familiar.

A throat clears from across the room and she snaps up to see Spencer sitting on the other bed, hands wringing together and eyes boring holes in the floor.

"Really?" she says, voice gruff with equal parts sleep and irritation. "After all this, you want me to try _again_?"

_Don't look up,_ she thinks all the while. _If you look up, I'm screwed._

Spencer looks up.

_Dammit. Stupid, irresistible eyes._

"I-I know I don't deserve it but it doesn't hurt to at least ask," she mumbles and gives a tiny shrug of her shoulders. "_Mess_ doesn't really even begin to describe me…"

Quinn is pretty sure this is the most words she's heard from the girl's mouth since they began sort-of dating. A growl rises up in her throat and she throws her hands up. Cannot possibly resist an aggressive, possibly crazy-of-some-sort brunette with _those eyes_. "Ugh, _fine_," she says. "But I'm planning it, and we'll go tomorrow night and so help me if you _attack_ someone or do that weird stalker thing or anything else equally stupid, this is over. Whatever _this_ is."

A smile actually lights up Spencer's face. Quinn nearly melts at the sight.

"Tomorrow, then." She stands and brushes invisible dust from her black slacks before heading out the door.

Quinn flops back in her bed. What the hell did she just agree to _yet again_? But the smell of gardenias clouds her mind and her own lips curl upward. Maybe this time…

**Sixteen.**

For a date-with-Spencer, things actually seem to be going well so far, at least in her estimation. No one's come out of nowhere brandishing tomatoes, no one's flash drive has gone missing, and not a ficus in sight. They're even holding hands as they walk from painting to painting at this gallery showing that Addison girl told her about the other day in class. A burst of red hair in her peripheral vision is nearly a cause for concern but at least the girl keeps her distance. If Spencer goes into attack mode at the mere mention of tomatoes, there's no telling what she'd do when faced with possible suitor competition.

A light squeeze of her hand draws her back to the art before them, and the girl who's rattling off an essay on the use of line thickness and how this may or may not be indicative of the artist's frame of mind at the time. She just nods and hedges a glance at Spencer, whose eyes are just _alight_ at all this exposition she's dropping.

Quinn nearly swoons at the sight.

An hour - and a couple sneaked glasses of champagne each - later, they're wandering across the campus in the general direction of their dorm. Spencer's quiet again. Apparently her loquaciousness only makes itself evident when presented with things on which she can recite an encyclopedia.

Quinn shakes the Rachel out of her head. "This was fun," she says instead, giving Spencer's hand - still entwined with her own! - a squeeze.

"Yeah."

_Oh hell, here we go again._ No matter, she decides. Time to push onward past this sudden onset awkwardness. They actually had a successful date. Can't let it get weird now, not when they're so close. Maybe a joke will suffice. "Hey, and you didn't even accost any-"

She finds it difficult to speak as her lips are suddenly otherwise occupied with the taste of strawberries.

_Okay, this will do,_ is her last thought before her everything short-circuits and she reflexively clasps her arms around Spencer's waist. Distantly she hears her cane clatter on the sidewalk but Spencer is just _everywhere_ all at once and she's pretty sure she's _actually_ melting this time and then there's something pressing against her back - a tree or a light pole or a something like that. If her eyes are irresistible, her lips are just _otherworldly_ and…okay, well that's just not _fair_ involving her _tongue_ in the matter.

The kiss ends nearly as abruptly as it began and it takes several seconds for Quinn to catch up and realize Spencer's staring at her from mere inches away. "Uh…I…" she stammers. "Cool."

Spencer just grins and dives back in.

**Seventeen.**

She's half-expecting another bouquet when she blinks awake, a smile still gracing her lips at those kisses beneath what she would later realize was the stalking tree. _So very appropriate._ And there is something resting nearby, but it's not exactly floral. She rubs her eyes and looks and sees…a tray, resting on the bed next to her. Bearing coffee and orange juice and pastries. And it all smells just _delightful_.

And across the way are _those eyes_ staring at her, attached to the rest of Spencer sitting on her own bed and wringing her hands. It all feels so very familiar.

Quinn just smirks, though and pushes up to sitting against the wall. Time to be the _cool_ one about everything, apparently. "You know," she says as she reaches for the coffee, "we did kiss last night. You're allowed to actually talk to me now."

A laugh actually bursts forth from Spencer's lips and she slides over to sit near Quinn's feet. "Yeah…old habits-"

"-die hard, I know." She takes a drink. Damn good coffee. "What, were you CIA before Yale or something?"

Spencer looks down at that and plucks at fuzz on her blankets. "It's…a really long story, actually…"

Quinn shrugs and pats the non-tray side of the bed next to her. She won't let this girl retreat from her now, certainly not after _those kisses_ last night. "Well," she says, "you just gave me a really big breakfast, so why don't you start while we eat?"

**Eighteen.**

She sleeps in late, something she hasn't done since middle-school and Santana had sneaked into her room late on a Friday night with angry tears and a liter of vodka. The feel of Spencer curled around her finally draws her from slumber with a lazy smile and she reaches to trace a finger along the face to which she's grown really, _really_ attached in spite of everything. Other people would have run, surely, after the accusations and the tomato explosion and definitely after hearing the entire saga of murder and intrigue and this _A team_ and how her own boyfriend had been tormenting her in secret.

She can't help but stay, though. When those eyes look at her, through her… She's a little flustered just thinking about them.

Still, though… She's nothing if not competitive and while Spencer's been through more than anyone she's ever known before, Quinn also can't help but want to compare their teenager craziness. She's a Fabray. She can't just _lose_ something without even trying.

She presses her lips to Spencer's once, then twice before she grumbles to some vague sense of wakefulness. One piercing brown eye winks open to look at her.

_Good lord, even just after she's woken up… No time for melting, Fabray!_

"I had a baby in high school," she says. Weird place to start, probably, but it _is_ still one of the major defining moments of her life to date.

Spencer doesn't react much visibly to that random factoid drop first thing in the morning, and instead rubs at her eyes for a minute before fixing them both on her. "Is that why you use a cane?" she mumbles, rough with sleepiness still.

"Wha- No!" Quinn gawks at her openly. "Are you _sure_ you go to Yale?"

Spencer, now more obviously awake, looks at her with a smirk that just _cakes_ over her eyes as well. "Come on! I'm kidding. Tell me about it. Him? Her?"

"Her. Beth, actually…"


End file.
